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Advise Me: Tip of the WeekTip

March 13, 2009 by Kara Trivunovic

Tip # 2009.009 – Know How Engaged Your Audeince Is.
The Email Advisor

Identifying email recipient engagement and acting upon it is always a hot topic of conversation. There are two schools of thought in the industry today: one believes that you keep an email address in your database until they unsubscribe, bounce or complain. The other believes that you should segment out, and ultimately suppress, those that have not engaged with an email communication during a defined period of time. The time definition typically varies based on the frequency of communication and the determination of suppression is either interpreted as “completely remove” from the database or “suppress” from all future messages. Regardless of who you side with on this debate, it is irrelevant unless this is something you actually track.

Testing alternate content for inactives: Tired messages can lead to customer indifference. Try mixing it up a bit and occasionally test an alternate message by using different content or images to those that have not interacted with previous message.
Re-confirm subscriptions: If your subscriber isn’t opening your message or opening infrequently, ask them if they want to continue receiving your communications. In an “image-off” email world, it is difficult to accurately assess who is actually opening so you may want also factor in click-activity.
Invite them to update their profile: If users can update their personal profile on your website, invite them to keept their inforamtion up-to-date. As message content becomes more data-driven, zeroing in on that which makes your subscribers unique and add to the relevancy of your message.

You can lead a horse to water, but at the end of the day you can’t make them open their email. Focus on the quality of your database. If you consistently have an inactive subset of your database that isn’t opening up your communications, you need to ask yourself the question “what is the value of keeping them on the distribution list. The answer is different for each email marketer out there. You just need to find the right one for your organization.